It was like a brother of the
horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and
rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over
the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him.
He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to
hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again."
Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys
sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his
chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never
left the woman's face.
"Before a month was gone I had married him," the, low, tired voice went
on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought
I had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own. For a time
all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy
to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold
his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was
quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too.
"At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the
floor and not beside me.
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